If you are feeling brainy it could be because you are part of the smartest workforce in America. The Intelligent Communities Forum has named Columbus in the top seven most intelligent cities in the world, and it is the only American city to make the cut.

Bell said that more than 400 cities around the world vie for the intelligence designation.

If I'm reading this correctly it sounds like Columbus had yo actually nominate itself or enter itself into a competition, and only 400 cities worldwide actually felt the need to enter this thing. Not really that impressive.

Exactly what formula did they use? Columbus is not a college town, not a tech town, not a center of culture, not in a desirable state, etc. Perhaps there was a minimum population? Even still, what about Palo Alto, San Fran, Boston (college population), etc?

But I am friends with Jody Shelley who now plays with Philadelphia (if you could call it plays) and has lived in many places across the USA (Cali., New York, Ohio, Florida, also clagary in Canada) and he loves Columbus. He still maintains his residence there and when speaking to him last summer he had nothing but good things to say about it. My brother has also been a couple of times to various medical conferences in Columbus and agreed with Jody that it is a very nice city.

Again, I have never been there but it seems from my experience that anyone who has been there that doesn't have a rooting interest in UM seems to speak very highly of the city. It seems sad to me (and yet not unexpected given what I know about many fans) that people would paint an entire city with the same brush that they paint a rival schools sports team. Oh well...I'm sure Columbus doesn't give much thought to what UM fans think about their city.

California is doing MUCH better than Michigan. The Bay Area is doing very well, though the central valley not so much. It's a very big state in both area and population, and it all depends where one lives. The economy is fairly diverse and not dependent on a single industry like Michigan. Although Columbus may be doing well it is probably the only place in Ohio that is.

Who the fuck has ever heard of the ICF before ? Seriously ... anybody ? Obvious "think-tank" organization that is no doubt bilking millions of dollars from somebody ... the gov't maybe (oops I mean We the People !)

This reminds me a little of a "Best Places to Retire" survey from 20 or so years ago. The winner? Pittsburgh.

I've got nothing against Pittsburgh, but it all depends on the evaluation criteria and the weighting that's used.

I went to the "Intelligent Community Forum" website and did a little browsing around. Here's an interesting bit of discovery -- Columbus, #1 in the world (not just U.S.) in 2013, was not even in their top 7 the prior year. Nobody moves a city that far that fast.

Cleveland, OH was #1 in 2006 ... then disappeared ever after.

From their website: "Intelligent Communities are those which have – whether through crisis or foresight – come to understand the enormous challenges of the Broadband Economy, and have taken conscious steps to create an economy capable of prospering in it."

Broadband. I haven't heard that word used with any reverence since ... um ... the 1990's.

Ah yes, I'm sure places like Palo Alto or Cupertino, awash in not only Stanford folk but also the employees of about six million high tech companies just pales beside the brain trust that is Columbus. Ann Arbor got a most educated award awhile back and I was a bit confused in that while Michigan is of course a great school, we don't have that much industry that actually retains the talent. Whereas other cities not only produce it domestically via a school, but also have multiple Fortune 500 companies recruiting talent in from other areas.

As a former resident of a Flint suburb; you, sir, are as obtuse as they come. Nothing compares to Flint, save Detroit. And pound-for-pound, Flint hold's its own there. There are no areas of Ann Arbor I wouldn't tread down the street at any hour of the day. There are places in Flint I wouldn't drive through in broad daylight.

"The rise of the Intelligent Community is a response to one of the greatest economic transformations in history. "Globalization" is the commonly accepted term for it. At the Intelligent Community Forum, we don't feel that the word does justice to the scope of this transformation, and to the way it is reshaping the economic lives of people around the planet. Nor does it explain why this transformation is taking place. Instead, we call it the Broadband Economy – an economy in which for all intents and purposes the hard-working people of Bangalore and Beijing live right next door to the hard-working people of Boston, Brussels and Buenos Aires."

I could be way offbase, but I think part of the broader term "globalization" has in fact been the rise of connectivity through technological means. It almost seems like they are simply redressing the definition of the term "globalization" slightly and perhaps placing emphasis on specific aspects of it.

This page here explains the criteria as well, which include "Knowledge Workforce", "Innovation" and "Digital Inclusion" as well as "Marketing And Advocacy". What I cannot find is why Ann Arbor and several dozen other college towns (at least), among others, would not also have fared well given the definitions of their own criteria. I could be missing something here, but even in the areas of success factors, which they also discuss, there are plenty of communities around the country which could make a good case, I think.

Is average household broadband penetration greater than 70% in your community?

Do 40% or more of your residents have a graduate, undergraduate, community college or technical school degree?

Is the average student-to-PC ratio in elementary and secondary schools less than 4-to-1 (e.g., 3-to-1)?

Is there a community college, undergraduate or graduate institution in your community or within commuting distance for residents?

Does your municipal Web site offer interactive and transactional capabilities?

Is the Internet - at any speed - available to at least 80% of households in your community?

Does your community offer free training in digital skills to adults?

Does your community have a documented strategy for economic & social development involving information and communications technology?

Whoa, they really set the bar high! OK, I left a few out, but really. Reminds me of awards that are handed out at high-tech trade shows.

Note, in 2008, northeast Ohio was lamenting that they lost out on winning 2 years in a row, the 2nd time in Gangnam Style! Columbus suburb of Dublin was in top 7 in 2010 and 2011; Cleveland in 2006. I guess Ohioans really like to try winning this thing.

Only Riverside, CA, has won the top award among the US cities since this thing started in 2002.